Tuesday, November 16, 2010

It's Street View but Is it Art?

Artist Jon Rafman was so inspired by Google Street View that he put together this collection of images found by scouring Google Maps.

The collection showcases some of the beautiful images he has found but also exploers the more seedy side of life that can sometimes be found on Street View. Of course Jon Raffman isn't the first artist to be inspired by Street View.

Apres Garde
There are quite a few websites that collect fun and interesting finds from Google Street View. None of them however find quite so many beautiful shots as Apres Garde.

Matt Bucher recently wrote a guest post for Google Sightseeing explaining the rationale behind his personal choice of Street View images. He certainly does seem to have a good eye for the artistic shots captured by the Street View cameras.

I'm sure Apres Garde would be a great source of inspiration to the Street View artists out there. Such as Lehel Kovács, an Hungarian designer uses Google Street View as the starting point for his cityscapes.

Similarly, if you wish to take part in Bill Guffrey's Virtual Paintout I'm sure Apres Garde will get your creative juices flowing.

The Virtual Paintout is a blog that encourages the use of Google Street View as a resource for virtually travelling the world to find interesting locations and subjects to paint. Each month Bill sets a location and participants have to find an appropriate Street View from that location and paint the found image.